


Waiting

by ramar



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 19:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14527245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramar/pseuds/ramar
Summary: Daenerys mulls over what leadership means after Jon bends the knee.





	Waiting

When Daenerys leaves Jon Snow’s bedchamber on the boat it is with a pounding heart. The ship is about to take off; she needs to disembark, to find Drogon and Rheagal, to comfort them, to lead them home, to get back to Tyrion and make plans for the future based on this new alliance and the enemy to the North. He will certainly be happy she had not died. They will certainly have plenty to talk about.

Yet something keeps her there, leaning against the chamber door, heart still refusing to subdue. This is not a feeling she has felt very often. Perhaps not since Drogo. Perhaps never. She closes her eyes for a moment and imitates what he had done to her hand—that soft clutching, his fingers still cold, his callouses betraying a history of fighting, working, fighting, working to make a better world. Daenerys, politically, can admire this: She has respect for leaders who think beyond themselves, and that his integrity was so rarely compromised makes her admiration only grow. Now, she, too, is being called to think beyond herself, and it took witnessing the death of Jon Snow to realize what bigger fights exist beyond the game of thrones.

He isn’t dead, of course, but she had thought he was, and that’s what scares her now. Surrounded by those men of ice—those White Walkers, had he called them? Wights, their ghostlike soldiers, moving as if puppets, unstoppable by swords alone?—she had witnessed him dragged beneath the surface. She had thought him drowned. She had left him behind, as she had left Viserion behind.

Slowly, Daenerys releases the fingers of her right hand and touches them to her mouth, brushing her soft fingertips across her lips. She has been through plenty of hardship in her life, of course, but she has never had to work—really work—with her hands. They are soft. Not like his, yet somehow, just like his. And she had left him behind.

And he had called her Dany. The whole thing, she thinks with an equal mixture of fear and elation, had been so _familiar_. Her brother _was_ the last person to call her Dany, but it sounded different coming from Jon Snow’s mouth. Like a gift. Like a leap of faith. _Dany. Dany_. It was risky for him to be so forward like that, yet she didn’t feel threatened by it then, and even now she wonders if she should have signaled so strongly that this nickname was unacceptable. It had pinged that feeling of skepticism and fundamental distrust she had for those who surmised to get close to her: A claustrophobia she knows she has, especially with men. Feeling unequivocally able to trust the King in the North is having a strange effect on her now.

She almost laughs, out loud, at the ridiculousness of her feelings, but stops herself just before she can, and good thing, too: Jon Snow exhales slow and deep just beyond the door at her back as he works through his pain. Listening, Dany sinks slowly to the floor of the boat. No, she definitely should not leave. Drogon and Rhaegal will follow the boat home, they know that she’s aboard. She needs to stay here, to wait, to see him again, to ask him why, why, _why bend the knee now, when I had just given into your fight? Why call me your Queen when I had already relinquished my word? Why did you call me Dany? Why didn’t you get on Drogon and leave with me when you had the chance?_

Yes, she decides. She’ll stay here. Right here. There is a puzzle inside of Jon Snow, a heart guarded by a maze of kindness, confusing to those who know the world for the hard, gruesome place it is. So she would remain here with him until he told her what all of these feelings mean, and why he gives them to her when they meet. No food would be delivered to him without her knowledge. No healer would lay their hands upon him without her approval first. No call could remove her from his side right now. No call except—

“Your Grace.” It is Jorah’s voice. Gravelled with age. Sincere. She snaps up to a standing position, swiping her hands from her mouth and clenching them behind her back. Jon’s breathing stops in the other room. He knows. Heat crawls up her neck and cheeks.

“Yes,” she breathes, trying to be as quiet as possible.

“Your dragons need you now,” Jorah says slowly, his eyes moving between her face and the door behind her. She hears a noise—Jon’s breathing again? the creak of the ship?—but refuses to look, tightens her grip around her own thumbs, and tries her best not to betray her face to Jorah.

“Is everything alright, your Grace?”

“Yes,” she says, fighting to whisper and be queenly at the same time. She wishes he would wipe that concerned look off of his face—what does it hide, jealousy? judgement? “Tell the others that Jon Snow”—she says his name slowly, abolishing all emotion from her voice—“is awake. I will come for Drogon and Rhaegal when I am ready.”

“Yes, your Grace.” Jorah bows. Daenerys watches him go with a twinge of guilt, but as he rounds the corner to go above deck she can feel her posture relax automatically.

She takes a few deep breaths. She still can’t get Jon’s voice saying _Dany_ out of her mind, and her heart rate is back up. She turns back to the door, thinking for one wild moment that she will get _exactly_ what he meant out of him with a few demanding questions, but to her surprise, the door is open a thin crack.

Curiously, she steps closer, touching her hand to the knob lightly. Is this an invitation? It was closed before. She _remembers_ closing it before. Jon could have been the only one who…

She opens it more fully, and peeks inside. Jon Snow lies in the bed, turned away from the entrance, his back silhouetted as light filters through the small glass windows on the other side. Is he playing games with her? Is this a trick? She can see a scar in the middle of his spine, as if a sword had been plunged straight through his heart.

Softly, she says his name: “Jon?” She’s never said it in its simplicity before—always the formal “Jon Snow” or “King in the North.” It feels as tender as his whispered Dany, as sacred as a confession of love.

But Jon doesn’t respond. He remains turned away from her, and now she can hear his breathing deepen. Daenerys lets out her own breath and closes the door. She has work to do. Children to comfort. Plans to make. Her hunger for him needs to—and can—wait.


End file.
